End Of Conversation! Evil Partisanship Has Killed Washington’s Social Scene

Shed a tear for poor Washington DC: the party is apparently over. You may or may not recall that just over a year ago in the midst of the euphoria over Barack Obama’s inauguration, people were falling over themselves penning columns about how New York was dead and Washington was where the party was at. Not just the party either but everything else of any importance.

Ah, what a difference an incredibly long year makes. David Carr has devoted his entire Monday column to the news that along with Sally Quinn’s WaPo social ‘Party’ column, DC society itself may have been canceled (again). It would seem the partisan rancor paralyzing the government has paralyzed polite society as well. Also, the power players have vacated the city for more powerful pastures.

In Washington today, the office holders flee to their families who live back in their districts as often as they can, and the city belongs to the horde of young people who staff various agencies, media outlets and lobbying outfits.

More than any other city I can think of, Washington is a city transformed. (Although some truisms still attain: Last week, Marion S. Barry Jr., now a D.C. council member, apologized for steering a contract to a woman he has been involved with and faces yet another investigation.)

Actual political might has been migrating away from the parties, never mind the people who go to parties, more rapidly than ever. And the official version of Washington has little allure outside the Beltway: one of the more important credentials for incumbents is how little time they actually spend inside the District.

Carr doesn’t say where the powerful are congregating exactly, or if they are even doing so in the old sense of the word. But I suspect at least some of that influential dinner party conversation has morphed into the far more transparent, and arguably more powerful, sort of conversation that routinely takes place on Twitter. In the meantime, NYC dinner parties continue apace.